Review – Lookout

Sigh.  The first few episodes were promising.  Secret vigilante hackers with a secret boss directing them.  A heinous crime committed by a cold-blooded psychopathic teenager.  A badass detective leading female and swarmy, egocentric prosecutor leading male.  There were promising elements at work in Lookout.  And yet… I could tell there was a disconnect somewhere.  I actually finished this drama awhile ago and have been sitting on this review, wondering what it was exactly that caused me to shrug this mystery-thriller off.  Honestly, I’m still not sure.  Somewhere around episode six, I started to lose interest.  I stuck around… but I was never fully committed.  I caught a few eps here and there.  The ending came, with its dramatic finale, and I was underwhelmed.

If I had to guess what ingredient it was missing… I would say heart.  There was no love (not romantic, not bromantic, not friendsies, nothing) between these characters.  Their relationships were tenuous at best.  Even their relationships with their families and coworkers seemed lukewarm.  Hell, even the show Bad Guys managed to have more heart than this drama – and it threw together a bunch of ex cons in a violent stew.  A similar show that nailed it with camaraderie and love between the underdogs fighting together to defeat corruption would be Mad Dog.  That show had everything this show lacks.

I guess there was a bit of something between the hackers, but eh… not enough.  And other than the initial murder of the detective’s daughter, I never felt a sense of danger or actual threat in Lookout.  Which is probably why the ending was so confusing, cause it literally just fell over into it… almost as if on accident.  Oops!  We forgot to make this climax, uh… climatic.  Let’s just kill someone off.  That’s dramatic, right?  Wrong.

I do give snaps for the sexy priest (cause… let’s just have a sexy priest in every show… I would be fine with that) and the creepster factor of our young psychopath miming “I Killed Her!” to our grieving mother, just after she’s surrendered her gun… cops and witnesses everywhere and he’s just shamelessly dogging her!  That’s good stuff.

Anyways, you want to see “crazy-mom” done right, watch God’s Gift: 14 Days.  You want to see criminals working outside the system for justice, watch Bad Guys.  You want to see a multi-layered prosecutor(s) or a scarier psychopath, watch Remember.  You want to see a hacker at work (not teenage stereotypes, either), check out Healer or Phantom.  If you want to see what this genre can really do – watch Mad Dog.  All of these are better dramas, in my opinion.  Not that Lookout was terrible, mind you.  It wasn’t bad.  It just wasn’t very good, either.

Overall Rating – 6/10.  The Hackers Stole The Show… But Not My Heart.